Pulp tried to quash the rumours, Robbie Williams was happy to fuel them – sharing a picture of a blue plaque in his name apparently slapped over a famous Glastonbury sign, before seemingly backtracking.

“30 years later…” he captioned his first social media post early on Friday morning – a reference to his headline-grabbing attendance in 1995.

This was the year Williams was famously pictured partying with Oasis‘s Liam and Noel Gallagher, shunning the boyband shackles with bleached-blonde hair and a blacked-out tooth. The writing was on the wall, and the announcement of his departure from Take That came just a few weeks later.

At Glastonbury this year, is the writing quite literally on the wall for a comeback?

Well, maybe not. A few hours after his post, Williams shared another, less cryptic message to say he would not be performing, along with his list of recommended acts to go and see – The 1975, Busta Rhymes, Charli XCX, Self Esteem and Reverend And The Makers, if you’re interested.

Is he bluffing? Double-bluffing? Who knows, but along with celeb spotting and mud, if there’s one topic of conversation that makes headlines when it comes to Glastonbury, it’s speculation about secret artists. Williams has got everybody talking.

Even before his posts, the Let Me Entertain You singer was among the artists rumoured to be performing secret sets this year, along with Pulp and Haim. Lewis Capaldi and Lorde too, with both “TBA” acts turning out to huge crowds on Friday.

In recent years, these surprise sets have turned into some of the event’s most memorable moments – think Foo Fighters as “The ChurnUps” in 2023, Pulp’s comeback in 2011, and Lady Gaga treating fans to a small performance in one of the festival’s after hours areas, Shangri-La, in 2009.

Franz Ferdinand, famous for hits including Take Me Out and Do You Want To in the mid-2000s, were the first to do it back in 2008. This was actually due to Pete Doherty’s band Babyshambles pulling out last-minute, but the approach to announcing the switch was, at the time, a novel one.

While officially, the act was “TBA”, frontman Alex Kapranos wasn’t great at keeping the secret, worried people might not turn up. He and bandmates handed out fliers, and word spread.

“We played on the Park Stage and we thought, ‘nobody’s going to know we’re playing’,” Kapranos told Sky News ahead of a return performance on Friday. “It actually ended up being one of the most amazing gigs we’ve ever played, people were so up for it and going crazy.

“We weren’t keeping it secret. We were walking about like, ‘we’re playing later on, check it out’. We’re a band from Glasgow called Franz Ferdinand.”

These now not-so-secret performances have become bigger and bigger as each festival rolls around, with leaks making headlines in the run-up to the event.

Providing handy tips and hints – and often eventually confirmation, just in time for fans to be in position – is the Secret Glasto team. They have no official ties to Glastonbury, but over the years have become a reliable source of information.

The account’s founder, who now works in a team of six, spoke to us on site – incognito, of course.

“We’ve got our own sources and we can start checking things because we’ve now had enough years that we can check in with several people,” he said. “And they trust us because we are quite sensible with when we time announcements, which I think is the key thing.”

Sometimes acts themselves will confirm, they said. Their success rate for predictions is “in the low 90%” – but dragged down mainly by inexperience in their first year, which was 2014.

Capaldi’s comeback yesterday, two years after struggling on stage at Glastonbury in 2023, was a special moment.

“It was really, really heartwarming to see him get back up,” Secret Glasto said. “There was such goodwill in the crowd and it was just magical. It’s just what secret sets should be about.”

On Saturday evening, a non-existent act called Patchwork have a pretty important billing just before Raye and then headliner Neil Young on the Pyramid Stage.

Pulp keyboard player Candida Doyle dampened rumours by reportedly saying in an interview earlier this month Glastonbury “weren’t interested” in booking the band.

But is this true?

“It happens a few times,” Secret Glasto said, of artists maybe telling little white lies to keep the secret for as long as possible. “They’ve got to keep the suspense somehow…

“Sources that we got for Pulp were really, really strong. It’s just so exciting for us, for the whole team. This is the most exciting secret set that Glastonbury’s ever done.”

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It’s a fine balance – not spoiling the surprise but giving fans enough time to get where they want to be. When a festival is this big – home to around 200,000 people over the weekend – at a lot of stages, fans need to be in place early.

“The point is to always make sure people can get to the set if they wanted to.” But if a huge artist is going to surprise fans on a very small stage, sometimes they have to keep schtum for safety concerns over huge crowds. “Sometimes we’re like, we can’t print this.”

So, will Williams be playing? The rumour is that he could be joining his mate Rod Stewart, who is performing on the Pyramid Stage in the “legends” slot on Sunday.

“Robbie Williams entered this area without accreditation, authorisation, or alignment with prevailing taste,” according to the blue plaque in his social media tease, of his attendance in 1995. “His presence was uninvited, unofficial and ultimately inevitable.”

In his candid documentary series, and biopic Better Man, both released last year, Williams has been open about his struggles with fame and imposter syndrome, and how as an artist known for pop he craved respect from those seen as more credible at a time when indie music reigned.

Officially this year, there is no Robbie Williams on the line-up. Unofficially, who knows? But 30 years since his partying with the Gallaghers, pop music is embraced – and there would be a lot of love for the star if he did make an appearance now.

Lewis Capaldi has made an emotional comeback with a “secret” performance at Glastonbury – two years after announcing a break from the spotlight, where he struggled on stage at the festival.

After revealing his new song, Survive, earlier in the day, Capaldi took to the Pyramid Stage and surveyed the huge crowd in front of him as he launched into his 2019 hit, Before You Go.

“Glastonbury, how you doing?” was the simple introduction after the first chorus, and then came his second song, Grace.

Before the next one, the Scottish star took it all in again and told the audience: “Glastonbury, it’s so good to be back… I’m not going to say much up here today because if I do, I’ll probably start crying.”

But, he added, he wanted to thank his fans, and “finish what I couldn’t the first time round”.

Along with the headliners and the Sunday afternoon “legends slots”, secret sets from the likes of Foo Fighters, The Killers, and Radiohead have become some of the most talked-about performances at Glastonbury in recent years.

This time round, there had been much speculation about some of the big unannounced slots on the bill – in particular the TBA act scheduled to appear on the festival’s main stage, the Pyramid Stage, just before Alanis Morissette on Friday afternoon.

With various clues trailed on social media and in Glasgow, where Capaldi was born, and Castle Cary, near Glastonbury, by the time Capaldi walked on stage, it was in reality no secret to all but a few of the huge crowd that had turned out for the “surprise”.

The 28-year-old acknowledged the absurdity of his set being “TBA”, describing it as the “worst kept secret” and joking: “I don’t know who’s been f*****g telling people.”

There were chants of “Oh, Lewis Capaldi!” from the crowd before he began his next songs, including Hold Me While You Wait, Bruises, Forget Me, and Someone You Loved.

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His performance was more than just a surprise set.

A few months before his last appearance at Glastonbury, again on the Pyramid Stage, in 2023, Capaldi had released the all-access documentary, How I’m Feeling Now.

It showed his rise from viral hit-maker to a star whose debut album, Divinely Uninspired To A Hellish Extent, became the biggest-selling in the UK in its year of release – and the year after, too.

No mean feat when you consider his competition – Ed Sheeran was second in 2019 and Harry Styles in 2020.

Fans have always loved Capaldi not just for his talent as a singer and songwriter, but for his class-clown humour and his unfiltered, indifferent style.

But his sense of humour and anti-celebrity attitude masked struggles with his mental health and Tourette’s, which he spoke about candidly in the film.

At Glastonbury in 2023, the strain was clear.

Prior to the performance, he had cancelled several shows to rest and recover. On stage, he apologised as he prepared to belt out his hit song Someone You Loved.

“I’m going to be honest, everybody, but I’m starting to lose my voice up here, but we’re going to keep going and we’re going to go until the end,” he told the crowd.

“I just need you all to sing with me as loud as you can, if that’s okay?”

And of course they did, the voices of tens of thousands of people carrying him through.

In a statement afterwards, the star said the sentiment had meant “the world”, before announcing a break for “the foreseeable future”.

“I used to be able to enjoy every second of shows like this, and I’d hoped three weeks away would sort me out,” he said.

“But the truth is I’m still learning to adjust to the impact of my Tourette’s and on Saturday it became obvious that I need to spend much more time getting my mental and physical health in order, so I can keep doing everything I love for a long time to come.”

In May, Capaldi performed his first show in two years – a charity gig in Edinburgh to raise funds for the Campaign Against Living Miserably (Calm), a mental health charity he has supported over the years.

For most artists, playing the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury is a dream. Now, Capaldi has achieved it once again – this time, fans didn’t need to help him with the sing-along, but of course they joined him anyway. The love from the audience was clear.

“How far will you go to get back to the place you belong?” is one of the lines from Survive.

With this performance, Capaldi showed that this, one of the world’s most famous stages, is still that place for him.